horror quiz of the week

Thanks for taking our quiz. You answered 100% of the questions correctly.

Excellent. Memorize the telephone number of your local civil defense agency – because if there’s ever a plague of undead carnivorous zombies, only people with your high level of horror-movie knowledge can save civilization.*

BOO-yah!

*As long as they're the Romero/Fulci-type zombie that die when you shoot 'em in the head, not the invincible Return of the Living Dead types...in that case, forget it. Since I've resumed my study of martial arts, I'd give even odds on the ones that, as Teleport City puts it, haul ass and do kungfu.

please stand by

But argh! Now, of all times -- just before the Presidential election and Halloween! -- I'm extraordinarily busy. We're slammed at work with an emergency deadline, and I've volunteered to help out. It'll be a late evening at work, but after getting The Girls in bed I hope intend to catch up some with the week's overdue blogging (several posts exist in draft form).

pinup of the day

Here's a résumé photo hosted by the IMDb of the lovely and talented Jamie Donahue, who starred in The Dead Hate the Living as the world's most wholesome Goth girl. I hope to see many more acting roles listed under her name.

halloween wallpaper of the day

Today's wallpaper is from the great 1999 low-budget horror flick The Dead Hate The Living, which my lovely wife and I watched this evening. I most recently mentioned this fun little low-budget flick earlier this month.

october surprise?

Interesting. Supreme Court Chief Justice announced today that he has thyroid cancer. Planet Swank wishes the jurist a full recorvery, of course. On NPR, Nina Totenberg opined that the justice's condition would almost surely lead to him stepping down, thus creating a vacancy on the Court for the next President to fill. She also indicated that President Bush may have hinted at just such an occurrence recently.

However, I think the Republicans would be foolish to count on this prospect boosting the turnout of their base to the point where it can defeat Kerry. True, the GOP has acknowledged Bush's lack of appeal to all but his rabid base, and Rove is doing everything he can to whip the faithful into a frenzy. But in this election, Democrats are motivated too, and the prospect of Bush getting to appoint a Supreme Court justice cuts both ways. I don't see this piece of news as the boost Bush needs to overcome his weak approval ratings.

bush administration incompetence watch

Some 380 tons of explosives powerful enough to detonate nuclear warheads are missing from a former Iraqi military facility that was supposed to be under American control, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency says.

Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the interim Iraqi government reported to the agency several days ago in a letter that the explosives were missing from the Al Qaqaa complex south of Baghdad.

The explosives -- considered powerful enough to demolish buildings or detonate nuclear warheads -- were under IAEA control until the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. IAEA workers left the country before the fighting began.

"Our immediate concern is that if the explosives did fall into the wrong hands, they could be used to commit terrorist acts and some of the bombings that we've seen," Fleming said.

She described Al Qaqaa as "massive" and said it is one of the most well-known storage sites. Besides the explosives, it also held large caches of artillery.

Fleming said the IAEA, which is based in Vienna, Austria, did not know whether some of the explosives may have been used in past attacks.

Deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said the multinational force in Iraq and the Bush administration's Iraq Survey Group had been ordered to investigate the disappearance of the explosives.

The news followed an IAEA report earlier this month that said high-end, dual-use machinery that could be used in a nuclear weapons program was missing from Iraq's nuclear facilities. (Full story)

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said President Bush wants to determine what went wrong.

McClellan, talking to reporters on Air Force One, said the storage site was the responsibility of the interim Iraqi government, not the United States, as of the June 28 transfer of power.

Unbelievable -- literally. To achieve this staggering level of incompetence, this would have to be the sort of Administration that would receive a warning of al Qaeda planning airline hijackings, then go on vacation without taking action to safeguard America's....oh.

As for McClellan's feeble attempts to hide this Administration's responsibility, Josh Marshall has the goods.

halloween wallpaper of the day

backfill blog

It's been a busy several days, and I've only just completed a post or two I'd begun in draft form several days before. I just finished my look at an MSNBC article on hentai anime. I hope to finish another nearly complete posts soon, and when I do I'll link them here. For now, it's off to bed.

phil carter explains it all

Intel Dump's Phil Carter penned a Slated column examining the recent refusal of some National Guard troops to conduct a transport mission in what they regarded as dangerously underprotected under-maintained vehicles, and puts it in context of the stresses the Guard and Reserves are suffering in the Iraq War.

horror movie of the day

Tonight my lovely wife and I watched my VHS tape of the imaginative low-budget horror film Forever Evil. This flick is notable for having been written by "the treacherous Dr. Freex," aka Freeman Williams, the host of The Bad Movie Report. He even appears in the prologue. On his site, Dr. Freex shares his experiences in making (and appearing in!) the film. It's truly educational reading, especially for viewers who are certain they could make a better movie than the ones they see (the moral is, maybe you can, if the budget and shooting schedule allow it).

local paper remains predictable

The local paper, to no one's surprise, today endorsed Republican Mitch Daniels for governor over Democrat Joe Kernan. However, it did so with a bit more vigor than it did its tepid endorsement of Bush for President. Of course, while touting Daniels' record in business and government service, it omitted his role in Bush's economic policies and the massive deficits they engendered. Indeed, the only mention of the word "deficits" came toward the end:

Retooling the state's economy will remain a daunting task. Closing an $800 million budget deficit will be an enormous obstacle for whoever is governor in the first months of next year. Bringing transformative change to state government operations will be difficult. Working with an entrenched and often stubborn legislature will be frustrating.

I also note with interest that the editorial's conclusion:

In nine days, voters will stand with all of Indiana at a crossroads. Stay on the current path and hope existing leadership can improve their performance and the state's condition? Or change direction and ask new leaders to find the way to a more prosperous, more livable Indiana?

It is time for a change.

...is exactly the opposite of the reasoning the paper used in its endorsement of Bush.

While the local paper's editorial might serve as an adequate journalism school example of a generic, fill-in-the-blanks editorial ("so-and-so has the record and the experience to guide the state through its challenges of the next four years, yadda yadda yadda"), as a persuasive piece, it falls short. However, since Daniels' role in the monstrous Bush deficits have been surprisingly absent as an issue in this campaign, I would not be surprised if Daniels prevails next Tuesday.

Alas for the state, one of the consequences of electing a Republican as governor is having a Republican as governor. As Bush and his ilk demonstrate, promoting the general welfare seems not to be a priority with the GOP these days.